Tag Archives: fearmongering

The only way background checks take away your Second Amendment rights are, my friends, if you’re a criminal, a terrorist or insane. And if you’re all three, you’re probably already a lobbyist for the NRA

Full disclosure, I am a Canadian, we don’t have a constitutional equivalent to the second amendment. I am generally flummoxed by the United States and its obsession with guns. In the end my main concern is not with gun control, it is how the speaker, comedian John Fugelsang obviously views common sense gun control as a social justice issue and that he is willing to capitalize on existing stigma around mental illness to further his progressive agenda.

While as an outsider to America’s debate about gun control, I support restrictions on obtaining guns because I have seen the horrors guns wreak particularly in the United States.

I however strongly object to the casual connection of criminals, terrorists and people with psychiatric disabilities (mad people, psychiatric consumer/survivors). Not least of my reasons being that people with mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators of it. That does not mean, that I disregard the fact that some of them can be violent and that people should be protected from that violence.

The quote further suggests that mental illness is connected to making decisions that are unpopular, like being a lobbyist for the NRA. This suggests that all opinions, decisions or actions that lead to violence are based in irrational thought patterns that can only be explained by illness.

Considering that people with mental illness are more often victims than perpetrators, it can be easily assumed that the vast majority of people committing violence are not sick. Unfortunately there are far to many people in the human race who are wiling to do others harm whether we agree with their reasons or not is not a good estimation of their mental health.

The problem is that people who experience mental illness are deeply stigmatized and the continued willingness for society to connect them to violence or general negativity only fuels that stigma even when it is done in the context of a joke. Particularly when that joke simply reinforces, rather than challenges that stigma.

It is made worse when that stigma is used to further what is otherwise in mu opinion a positive position. Any progressive movement which is willing to throw a marginalized group under the bus to further its aims is a problematic one.

There are many arguments for gun control that can be made without stigmatizing mental illness.

Gun control laws enacted in other countries when properly administered are really effective (like Australia)

When I saw the above image on twitter, I responded with a simple desire to see social justice movements stop stigmatizing marginalized people unfairly to further their agenda.

I can’t link you to the conversation because the original poster blocked me and I no longer have access to it.

While I was unhappy to see pushback to a rather simple concept, I didn’t feel like getting into a big twitter argument but the original source of the image kept responding and insulting me, calling me a pedant. I was unaware that believing that social justice movements should not succeed at the expense of others was an overly academic and complicated position to hold.

I only responded after they claimed that the social stigma of mental illness was an old issue that shouldn’t overshadow the argument for gun control. To which I simply responded

“I reject the idea that one human rights movement must be thrown under the bus to support another”

The bigger issue isn’t even that John Fugelsang made the original quip. It is how quotable it is and how easy it was to make into a meme that is easily shareable allowing for the uncritical mass proliferation of the basic negative feelings around mental illness which give the idea power and credibility it does not deserve.

Fear should only be used against things that merit it. Generally speaking a group of people that are completely unconnected to one another other than a general type of medical diagnosis does not merit that fear.